What Price Are Americans Prepared to Pay for Defending Taiwan? 

American policymakers appear set on war. The only question is against whom. Alas, they apparently believe the more, the merrier. 

Washington continues to aid Ukraine, which is increasingly striking within Russia and recently grabbed Russian territory around Kursk, site of a historic World War II battle. Moscow just launched a flurry of missile and drone strikes on Ukraine. Israel and Hezbollah recently traded blows, and Iran continues to threaten retaliatory attacks on Israel, with American units on station to defend the latter. The U.S. Navy is battling Yemen’s Ansar Allah (the Houthis). In Asia the Pentagon garrisons South Korea, patrols the Asia-Pacific, and threatens China over Taiwan.

This all comes naturally to Americans who grew up in a world in which the United States deployed the world’s most powerful military. Washington’s influence was constrained during the Cold War, but its relative power grew dramatically in the aftermath of the Soviet Union’s collapse. National ego took over. “What we say goes,” declared President George H.W. Bush. His successors have acted accordingly, determined to run the world, as President Joe Biden put it. Yet who outside of Washington would commend Uncle Sam for the job that he has done?

The problem is not just ostentatious failure. It is possible disaster. The Russo–Ukrainian war is dangerous enough. Allied policymakers and commentators appear to have concluded that Russian President Vladimir Putin is little more than a paper tiger, unwilling to escalate despite Ukrainian strikes on and incursions in Russian territory. Nevertheless, Moscow still appears to be winning, advancing in the Donbas and biding its time before dealing with seemingly isolated Ukrainian troops around Kursk. If Putin comes to believe Russia is losing, he might choose to escalate and risk bringing the U.S. and NATO into the war. 

The danger of conflict with the PRC over Taiwan is even greater. Consider war with a great power that is greatly increasing its military outlays while already possessing significant conventional capabilities, the world’s second-best navy, a formidable missile force, and an expanding nuclear arsenal. Imagine fighting thousands of miles away over territory less than 100 miles off China’s coast. All while U.S. allies could choose to remain neutral rather become permanent enemies of the giant next door. 

From the outside Washington appears to be filled with Sturm und Drang over the great issues facing America. But these policy battles are mostly for show. There is little disagreement over whether U.S. policymakers should run the world. Rather, they fight over who among them should run the world. That’s why Washington launched a proxy war against nuclear-armed Russia in Europe. And why Uncle Sam showered Israel and Saudi Arabia with weapons to kill tens of thousands of civilians in Gaza and Yemen respectively. It’s also why the virtually unanimous view in Washington is that the U.S. should be prepared to go to war with the People’s Republic of China if it attacks Taiwan.

Over the latter there is virtually no debate. Yet consider the consequences. Start with economics. If conflict erupts in Northeast Asia and surrounding waters, regional trade could collapse. If Washington and Beijing targeted each other’s maritime commerce, the conflict would spread worldwide. There would be massive trade, financial, and industrial shocks, the latter intensified by Taiwan’s outsize role in the world’s production of semiconductor chips. Bloomberg Economics figures that a simple blockade would be expensive for all: “For China, the U.S., and the world as a whole, GDP in the first year would be down 8.9%, 3.3% and 5% respectively.” The price tag for a shooting war could run “around $10 trillion, equal to about 10% of global GDP—dwarfing the blow from the war in Ukraine, Covid pandemic and Global Financial Crisis.” 

Lost commerce would pale compared to other costs. Observed the Brookings Institution’s Michael O’Hanlon: “World War III could not be ruled out, and the survival of the human race might even be on the line.” Never has there been a full-scale conflict between two nuclear powers. Although the Soviet Union and U.S. fought “limited” conflicts in Afghanistan, Korea, and Vietnam, and India and Pakistan swatted each other conventionally over Kashmir, it would be foolish to assume that Beijing and Washington could keep a battle over Taiwan similarly restrained.

First, the interest involved, control over Taiwan, is more important for the PRC than the U.S. Even students otherwise critical of the Beijing government for its intrusive censorship, laborious demands, and other oppressive controls insist that the island republic is part of China. One reason is deeply emotional, the belief that reversing Taiwan’s detachment by Japan in 1895 would complete the PRC’s recovery from the “century of humiliation” at the hands of others. Another is security: no country, including the U.S. (remember the Cuban Missile Crisis!) will tolerate its great rival maintaining a military base but a few score miles offshore. For China more than the U.S., failure would not be an option.

Second, Beijing would enjoy a significant geographic advantage, able to use mainland bases for operations against Taiwan and surrounding waters. This would force Washington to target the Chinese homeland, which the PRC would almost certainly see as an escalation requiring a response. The latter could include attacks on U.S. facilities in Guam and the Commonwealth of Mariana Islands, Okinawa and elsewhere in Japan, and even in Hawaii. It would be difficult for Washington not to escalate in return. Perhaps good sense would prevail. Yet the American and Soviet peoples barely avoided catastrophe in the Cuban Missile Crisis, when the U.S. played the role of China today. It would be foolish to tempt fate twice.

Third, the political price of failure in the PRC would be high, likely much higher than in the U.S. Despite Xi Jinping’s dominant position, initiating a failed war would allow his disparate foes to coalesce against him. Thus, he would be more likely to double down and escalate, daring Washington to match, than to retreat. If he fell, his successors probably would rearm and prepare for a rematch, like Germany after World War I, rather than accept the loss and go peacefully into the sunset. Defending Taiwan would require eternal vigilance and permanent militarization of the Asia-Pacific by the U.S.

Such a commitment could not easily be sold to the American public. Whatever the PRC’s ambitions, conquering the U.S. is not one. The issue between Washington and Beijing is domination of the Asia-Pacific, the PRC’s home, not security of the Americas, about which Americans are most concerned.

Taiwan has no direct relationship to this nation’s defense. At most, control over islands close to China would inhibit its naval operations. However, Washington should not go to war today because it might want to go to war in the future. Nor would doing so be worthwhile. The United States Navy War College’s Jonathan D. Caverley dismissed the security justification for war: 

Taiwan is a small, 90-mile-wide island just off China’s vast coast. If it became a fully armed Chinese province, the difference in military power between Beijing and Washington would barely shift. China already possesses formidable space, land, air, sea, and cyber systems designed to detect and destroy U.S. and allied naval and air platforms far from the mainland. It does not need the island to menace the United States. Taiwan would give China a new place to base its systems, but the advantages that come from putting its weapons on the island versus the mainland are marginal.

Caverley also warned that direct American defense of Taiwan “would provide Beijing with the chance to destroy many American ships, planes, and troops in terrain favorable to the People’s Liberation Army (PLA). The U.S. military would likely come away greatly weakened, even if it ultimately prevailed.” If Washington and Beijing are fated to struggle over global dominance, then the former should look beyond the Taiwan Strait, argued Caverley: “Beijing is better positioned to quickly reconstitute its regional forces, meaning it could press on more easily.” He prefers a strategy of “loading [Taiwan] up with drones, mines, and other relatively inexpensive defensive weapons, turning it into what military planners call a ‘porcupine’ that China would struggle to digest,” with only limited direct support.

Other arguments for war are similarly unpersuasive. Would failing to defend Taiwan ruin U.S. credibility, especially with Washington’s Asian allies? Japan, the Philippines, and South Korea all have defense treaties with the U.S., the purpose of which is to provide a formal legal guarantee. The U.S. formally ended its Taiwan treaty in agreeing to mutual recognition with the PRC. Washington has no obligation to go to war for Taipei, which America’s treaty allies surely understand. 

War would not save the Taiwanese semiconductor chip industry, since the factories would be turned into rubble, either by Chinese or American bombs. The solution to the West’s vulnerability to Taiwan’s stranglehold over the market is spreading production more broadly, the objective of the 2022 CHIPS Act. (The legislation probably will fail to achieve its ends, but is still a better approach than war with China.) There also are humanitarian interests at stake, but they are not sufficient for Americans to risk global and nuclear war. Especially since Washington is ever ready to kill civilians promiscuously, often through authoritarian allies and sometimes directly.

Perhaps the best argument for threatening to battle the PRC over Taiwan is as a bluff to deter the former from attacking the latter. Nevertheless, pretending might make conflict more likely. Such a threat would suggest the existence of the kind of cooperative military relationship that Beijing fears and encourage China to preempt U.S. forces if it decided on war. If Washington did not back up its threats, then its credibility would be badly damaged.

There are no easy answers if the PRC attempts to reclaim Taiwan. In June Donald Trump declared: “Taiwan should pay us for defense. You know, we’re no different than an insurance company.” The Taiwanese certainly should pay for their own defense. The U.S., however, can support Taipei without going to war—selling weapons to the latter now and organizing allied states to isolate the PRC economically if Beijing strikes. Washington should seek to prevent a war, but not enter into one if it starts.

So far there has been little serious debate over pressing issues in the presidential race. Few questions are more important than: For what would the candidates go to war? Taiwan would be a good place to start this conversation.